Podcast » Mark Morris
American dancer, choreographer and director Mark Morris is one of the most successful and influential of contemporary modern choreographers.
people » Rudolf Nureyev
Credit: Photograph by Boris Carmi, taken in Israel in 1963. From the National Library of Israel, currently in the Meitar Collection of the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection
Rudolf Nureyev (1938 – 1993). Russian dancer, choreographer, director and producer
Rudolf Nureyev’s story was as exciting as his stage presence and his dancing. He proved a boon for the box office and, against all the odds, developed a legendary partnership with Margot Fonteyn.
Born on a train near Lake Baikal in 1938, Nureyev danced in amateur groups in Ufa until he was accepted to study at the Leningrad Ballet School with the great teacher Alexander Pushkin. He joined the Kirov Ballet as a soloist in 1958. When the company went on tour to Paris in May 1961, Nureyev was a great success. Always a rebel, he was reprimanded by the Russian authorities for spending time with French friends. As the Kirov Ballet were about to board an aeroplane to London, for a season at the Royal Opera House, Nureyev was ordered to return to Leningrad. Certain he would never be allowed to leave the Soviet Union again, he managed to grab the arms of two French policemen and asked for political asylum. Eventually this was granted and so began a nomadic life of phenomenal quest and success.
Nureyev was a star in every way and was feted everywhere he went. However, he never stopped working and searching. He was a man of great passion, depth and intelligence and he was truly charismatic. He loved ballet and all that it means with his whole being, and infuriating as he could sometimes be, that love never diminished.
Podcast » Antoinette Sibley
Antoinette Sibley talks with Alastair Macaulay. Her wonderful mix of enthusiasm, appreciation and practicality typify the glorious mercurial talent that has beguiled a generation of dancers and...
Timeline Event » 1961 – Rudolf Nureyev defects in Paris
Following his defection from the Soviet Union in Paris earlier that year, Rudolf Nureyev gives his first performance in the Britain in 1961 in Poème tragique at the Royal Academy of Dancing’s Gala...
Timeline Event » 1963 – The Royal Ballet dances the ‘Kingdom of the Shades’ scene from Marius Petipa’s La Bayadère for the first time
This mysteriously beautiful ballet, originally in four Acts, was created in 1877 by Marius Petipa, ballet master of the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg. This typically Romantic tale has undergone...
Kenneth MacMillan was eager to give ballet its ‘new wave’, and though his earlier one-act works revealed a unique perspective and command of ballet’s expressive potential, it was his first...
Timeline Event » 1966 – The Royal Ballet Touring Company dances Act III of Marius Petipa’s Raymonda for the first time
Marius Petipa’s Raymonda was originally performed by the Imperial Russian Ballet in St Petersburg in 1898 to music by Alexander Glazunov. Rudolf Nureyev staged the full-length Raymonda for The...
Timeline Event » 1968 – Beryl Grey becomes director of London Festival Ballet
After a period of instability, London Festival Ballet appointed Beryl Grey as the company’s new artistic director. She commissioned a number of important productions for the company, including Mary...
Timeline Event » 1970 – The Royal Ballet dances Jerome Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering for the first time
Dances at a Gathering, which had been created for New York City Ballet in 1969, represented the first work by Jerome Robbins to enter The Royal Ballet’s repertoire. Danced to music by Frédéric...
Rudolf Nureyev’s version of Romeo and Juliet for London Festival Ballet is highly cinematic, sumptuous and colourful, and emphasises the inevitability of the couple’s tragic fate while also...